


Gods, Let Me Try

by just_a_dram



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Love Confessions, Mild Blood, Post-Battle, Protectiveness, Tent Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 17:53:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7397572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/just_a_dram/pseuds/just_a_dram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon told Sansa to remain in his tent for her own safety, but she continually frustrates his attempts to protect her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gods, Let Me Try

**Author's Note:**

> @aliceofalonso made a beautiful edit to go along with this fic, which you can see [here](http://aliceofalonso.tumblr.com/post/146456720078)

When Jon pushes back the flap on his camp tent, he finds it empty. It’s not supposed to be empty.

He throws his shield aside, letting it clatter to the frozen ground. He turns to shout, but Satin is already at his side with an explanation for Sansa’s absence, the source of Jon’s building dread. Fear shifts to relief and then sours to fury, when he discovers where she has gone. She insisted on assisting the maesters with the wounded, and true to Satin’s report, that is where he finds her after rushing his steward through the removal of his armor.

He pushes through the rows of men, some moaning, some gone still, making his way towards the one copper haired woman amongst the camp followers and scraggly looking maesters, who do their best to staunch the flow of blood and patch the men back together. Those who see Jon coming move out of his way, anyone who doesn’t gets shouldered aside. His heart is still pumping hard from the battle, and he is full of wroth that she would risk herself by leaving his tent.

It is one of the few safe places alongside the battlefield. No one would dare enter. Not because of Satin’s presence as a questionable guard, but because being inside his grey and red striped tent places her under Jon’s protection. Half the men think him a god, but to those who don’t care what it means to be a Stark, once she is beyond his circle of protection, Sansa is just another beautiful woman ripe for the picking. Daenerys has condemned men to the flames for rape, despite their needing every man, but Jon doesn’t want more justice for Sansa. He doesn’t want Sansa to have to endure any more violence at the hands of anyone.

Sansa looks up from the man she tends—no more than a boy as many of them are. She scans his person, taking in the state of him. He is splattered in mud and blood, but then so is she: he stained from battle and she from her efforts here. Skirts knee deep in mud and hands coated in blood, she looks little like the girl from Winterfell, who lectured on courtesy.

Stepping away from the man upon whom she practices her grisly embroidery, she waves over another woman to take her place. Her attentions are divided even as she moves to speak with him, glancing around, already readying herself to move on to the next man in need of her help.

When her hands smooth over her apron, they leave dark red smears behind. He has grown accustomed to the constancy of blood, but it never ceases to be startling to see her equally at home with violence all around her.

Face perfectly composed, she inquires with a tilt of her head, “Is the battle over?”

His chest rises and falls too fast and he swipes the back of his hand across his brow, giving himself space to breathe before he answers. “For now.”

What he wants to do is shout. Demand to know what she is about, risking herself.

“Good. There have been some considerable casualties though.”

There always are. “Yes.”

Her hands wring her apron. “I have men to see to.”

She would dismiss him, but he is not finished with her. “I have need of you.”

Her eyes rake over him once more. Does she guess what sort of need he has? She might.

It is the battle, heating his blood and fraying his self-control. This is the very thing he meant to shield her from by insisting she stay inside his tent. He should pardon himself, excuse himself from her presence, and retire to his tent, but anger makes him quick to make demands. “Now, Sansa.”

“Are you injured?”

There’s a momentary crack in her composure, a wrinkle between her brows and a parting of her lips, but when he brusquely answers, “No,” whatever concern that betrayed itself on her unetched face is erased.

He is furious enough not to care whether she is annoyed with him or not. He can’t or won’t say what he needs to before a crowd of curious onlookers. “I would have you come with me,” he says, taking hold of her elbow. She looks at his bare hand—washed mostly clean at Satin’s insistence in a basin of cold water already bearing a crackling skin of ice—on her rolled up dress sleeve and arches one brow. “Let the maesters see to the men.”

Though coolly contemptuous of his urgency, she gives way, taking a step to follow him with a toneless, “Lead the way.”

Her agreeing to follow does not herald a gentled spirit, however. Her practiced calm amongst the wounded fades as soon as they are alone. The flap of his tent closes behind them, and she takes no time to wrench herself free of his grip.

“I am not yours to command,” she grits out, untying the strings of her apron and balling the gory mess up before letting it fall to the ground. “I am Sansa Stark, daughter of Ned Stark.”

“I bloody well know who you are,” he interrupts, his voice too loud. But everyone has grown accustomed to Jon and Sansa’s arguments, and yet another will hardly bring Satin into the tent in the lady’s defense. “I know the second part of that little speech by heart too. I am the Jon Snow. A bastard son of the last Warden of the North or of the last heir to the Targaryen throne. You’re very good at reminding us,” he says, striding for the camp table, where Satin has left a pitcher of ale and one crude leather tankard lined in pitch. He pores too fast: his trembling hands slosh some over the side.

It is meant for himself, for he is parched from battle, but Sansa grabs it from him. Glaring at him over the rim, she drinks. He watches as she swallows, mesmerized by the roll of her throat. Two long strands of hair made sticky with perspiration, wrap around her graceful neck, marring the white of her skin.

She would taste of salt, the treacherous voice that interrupts his thoughts fifty times a day muses.

She lowers the tankard and chases a stray drop of ale on her rosy bottom lip. “You act as if it’s a condemnation. I’m merely being exact.”

Jon has never been entirely sure whether she meant her diplomatic assertions as condemnation or recommendation. Or if as her mother’s daughter, the one is inexorably tied to the other.

“Yes, exactness here at the end of all things is much appreciated.”

She raises her brows. “No one cares that you’re a bastard.”

She pushes the tankard into his chest, so he is forced to take it from her. “But you appear to need some reminding that I am not some common camp follower for you to boss about. If I wish to sew up every man under your command, so they might fight another day at your side, I shall do so with or without your leave.”

He has no further vows, only the circumstances of his birth to ever give him pause. If she was a common camp follower and she was willing, he would have already born her onto the bed, so he spread press her legs apart.

“You were safer in this tent,” he says through clenched teeth.

She raises her hand above their heads, pointing at the sky hidden by heavy canvas. “There are dragons above us and creatures that only die by fire that come by the droves from beyond the Wall. You can’t protect me from everything.”

“Gods,” he says, setting the tankard down on the corner of the camp table. It’s flimsy and he applies too much force. Table, tankard, and stone pitcher go crashing to the ground, as he says, “Let me try.”

He was at ease with Sansa at first, not clumsy and angry. He was perfectly content being reunited with her, and then they began to have heated rows over how best to unite the North. Their disagreements confused him, churning his gut, for she was as pretty angry as she was formidable and frustrating, the sort of woman he had grown to admire.

It’s become impossible to ignore his unnatural stirrings. With his parentage revealed and murmurs of how welcome some would find a Northern alliance, Jon’s efforts to bury his feelings alongside their family in the crypts of Winterfell are undermined. Men will talk, forcing him to confront the possibility of marrying his sister. His half-sister. Cousin.

If there is a Westeros left to rule over, when the war is over, not everyone wants to kneel to Daenerys, Mother of Dragons. Some would prefer a Northern kingdom. As Daenerys’ heir, a marriage between he and Sansa could keep the Targaryen forces in the South at bay, should they decide to raise a Northern king once more.

The whispers can’t have escaped Sansa, but she has not spoken to him on the matter. Perhaps she discounts the notion outright as so much bad political postulating. Or perhaps she knows he has indulged the idea privately, grasping at ways she might come to be his—as bad as the rest of them, the men, who have schemed to make her their own.

He kicks the pitcher at his feet sideways, giving in to the hotness that bunches his muscles and makes his skin feel tight with inaction. Sansa watches with a disdainful disappointment that makes him want to take her by the shoulders and give her a shake or kiss her until her knees go weak. He hates that she’s seen him at his worst. Hates that she knows he can be little more than an animal, when he loses control.

He scrubs his beard, schooling himself to keep an even tone. “If the battle was lost, Satin would not have been able to find you fast enough to get you on a horse and away from here. That was the plan, Sansa.”

“I won’t run. I’ve told you that. I am staying with you to the end.”

“Then let me protect you. Stay out of the way during the battles.”

“Vow something better,” she says, pushing him back with a simple step forward, one hand extended in accusation. “Vow something more than to protect me.”

“When will you tell me what you want?” he demands, grabbing hold of her wrist.

Sansa tugs at her wrist, but he holds it fast. When he does not give way, her nostrils flare. “You might promise to love me. That I could use.”

With his grip tight on her wrist, he hauls her into his chest. He doesn’t have to tip his head to bring his mouth to hers. Madness has seized him, but it must have infected her as well, for when his tongue traces the seam of her mouth, she opens underneath him. Licking into her mouth, she tastes of bitter ale. Closing his mouth under the shell of her ear, she is salty as the sea. Her skin is cool from the winter winds and yet wet from her exertions, lifting unconscious men and holding those who thrash down for the maester’s saw—as good as a death sentence. Her body bends to him, long legs straddling him, as his hand slides down her back, mapping the leanness of her body and the rise of her arse.

Jerking her head to the left, she frees herself of his hurried attentions and gives him a shove backward. It isn’t what he expected, and he blinks, trying to clear his vision.

“If you want me to stay in your tent, you’ll stop calling me your sister.”

“Lady?” he asks, allowing himself to be walked backwards until the heels of his boots knock the foot of his bed. Her blue eyes are wide, staring back at him in challenge. He tries again. “Princess? Queen?”

She reaches out to tug on one of the leather straps, where his leather doublet buckles on the side. A tug and then a push, working the strap back through the buckle. “Has it not crossed your mind in all this blustering to command me that I am not your wife?”

“I’m aware,” he says, his hand opening and closing, wanting to touch her again, wanting to assist her with the buckle, hurry along whatever it is she is teasing.

“Wife is better, Jon. Try wife.”

With a hand squared to her lower back, he drags her down with him onto the bed. He is already uncomfortably stiff in his breeches, when she lies upon him, so she must know how much it would suit him to be under her command. For he knows that would be the way of it with Sansa as his wife.

He smudges her lip with his thumb. His hands might be washed, but there is blood under the nail, he smells of the battle, and his hair is plastered to his head. Not good enough to touch her. But she doesn’t seem to care, as she works at the buckles on his doublet one after another and then turns to the laces on his breeches, shucking him of his clothing piece by piece, her gaze as observant in this brisk unveiling as ever.

The air is cold against his bare skin and he draws her down, still fully clothed atop him. “I don’t want to lose you.” It’s an explanation, an apology for his lack of measure, as much as a confession of his need to keep her close.

“I’m not lost yet,” she promises against his ear.

No, they have both survived this far, he thinks, rolling her underneath him, but he needs more than this moment. “That isn’t good enough.”

He needs a guarantee of her safety. He needs to know she will never be harmed and that she will always be there, not be buried like the rest.

He slants his mouth against hers. Bites at her soft lips. Drags his tongue across hers, when she opens her mouth to him. Her hands frame his face, tracing the tendons in his neck that stand out as she rocks up into him. This is what he wants. What he has wanted for far too long to slow his hurried grasping and panted breath, coming as fast as it did in battle with the same narrowing of focus. Everything is her lips and hands and his cock pressing into her middle.

He draws her skirts up between them, and when he feels the prickle of her bare flesh, where her woolen stockings end, his brows knit. He forces a slow breath through his nose. “You’re cold.”

She shakes her head, lying. The Sansa of old would complain, and yet, even if she were to own her discomfort now, there is very little he could do as her brother to warm her.

He is not her brother.

His hand follows the soft round of her thigh, his thumb skating along the edge of her smallclothes. “I could help you forget the cold.”

“Yes,” she says, lifting her hips, allowing him to hook his fingers in her smallclothes to work them down.

Her heels slip atop the camp bed, anticipation making her restless, as his lips mark a hot trail over her white thigh until his nose nudges her soft belly. His cock twitches hard against his middle, when his mouth closes around her and she moans the way he’s imagined in his heated dreams. She’s salty here too.

She says his name too loud— _Jon_ —and he should shush her, but discretion is the furthest thing from his mind, as he brings her closer to her shattering point with the steady roll of his tongue over her. There is the tug of possession, at being hers and she his, with his name spoken in such hungry tones. It makes his fingers press into her flesh and then slide inside her until her thighs close tight about his ears, muffling her keening.

Though he needs no urging, she encourages him to cover her, her hands bracing his back and murmuring nonsense about the gods into the crook of his neck, as he rubs against her. She’s wet and warm and with a hand wrapped around his cock, he pushes into her—too fast. He apologizes, but with a stuttering swear too coarse for her ears, and he would try again, but she cuts off his protestations with a “more” he is happy to oblige.

He would have her bare. Take her nipples in his mouth until they pebble on his tongue. Feel her breasts brush against him, as he moves above her. Mark her sweet flesh with the rub of his beard. But he can’t stop his hips from snapping against her, drowning in the pull of her warm body. He buries himself inside her again and again, thumbing her thigh to fall open, so he might see where they meet. The sounds they make together are primitive like the bite of her nails into his back, driving him towards completion, but she still manages to be courteous, as she caresses his hip and makes him swear not to pull out with a _please_. Words he’d never thought to hear from her kiss swollen lips.

She rocks her hips, drawing him in deeper, and with the angle changed and the firmer brush of the blunt of him inside her, he loses his rhythm. His movements become quick then halting, and his fingers twine in her hair, twisting, as the world narrows down to one point of pleasure, knotting his insides. With her ankles locked behind his back, he spends inside of her in a long, hard release that screws his eyes shut tight and tenses his belly. His muscles jump, ones he could hardly move without wincing before he tasted her lips, and his arms shake, threatening to give out of him, as the last of his seed spills.

Sucking in air, he collapses on his bent arm, half on her and half off. His chest heaves, as she strokes down the length of his side, tracing old scars and smoothing them out with the gentle touch of her slender fingers. It oozes out of him, the battle heat, the crazed need to see her and know she’s safe, leaving him a weary shell, soothed by her soft kisses along his strained right shoulder and the tickle of her toe tracing the back of his leg.

He makes himself a promise. A new one, more achievable than the promise to protect her from the world. He’ll be as good to her as others have been harsh. He will be gentle where they have been hard. He will ask permission where they took. Theirs shall be a marriage of equals.

But he’ll protect her too.


End file.
